Friday, February 08, 2008

Romanticism's long-lost half cousin

Billy 'Bingo' Coleridge was the long-lost half cousin of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. (He was finally found by that great poet and writer of 'Biographia Literaria' in the London Gentlemen's Club for Old Young Fogeys attempting to take a pinch of snuff with an elephant.)

Here are some of his poems.

Daffodils

This morn I wandered by a spanking streamAnd lay my head besides a spanking rillAnd had an absolutely spanking dream! - What ho! - of spanking yellow daffodills!

Each yellow head by dingling yellow headNodded to and fro within the prinking breeze - As if to say, "Good day, old chap, good day," -This floral dreaming was a spanking wheeze!

Where are they now, the old familiar faces? Raffles, Cholmondly, Baron Chips; Gloucester, Churchill, Randolph Phipps? And I haven't seen young Rolmondley since I lost him at the races - Where are they now, the old familiar faces?

Shortly after finding his long-lost half cousin, Coleridge 'accidentally' misplaced him again in the Manchester Zoo. He later tried to blame the whole event on a person from Porlock.

3 comments:

I sometimes have trouble saying l's clearly. (As a child I got into a lazy habit of putting the back of my tongue to the roof of my mouth to make an "l" sound, instead of the front of my tongue.) I have to concentrate to make the sound properly.

That line "Larking larksomely lark-like thither!" therefore ties my tongue up in knots completely. But maybe it does that even for someone who says "l" normally?